When Populism Meets Nationalism

In Europe and beyond, today populism is alive and kicking. Over the past few years, anti-establishment parties have made substantial strides. Some of them have reached the levers of governments, while others are consolidating their gains.Being a “thin” ideology, populism is being contaminated by nationalism. This book offers a number of case studies on those countries whose governments have been labelled “national-populist”. Ranging from Italy to the United States, from the Visegrad countries to Turkey, Russia, and Latin America, this Report aims to single out what all these cases have in common, but also what sets them apart from each other.

Populist nationalism fuses beliefs that citizens are being exploited by a privileged elite with claims that the national culture and interests are under threat from enemies within or without. Ideologically fluid, populist nationalists decry “out-of-touch” institutions such as political parties and the mainstream press while extolling the virtues of the “people.” They claim that only populists can truly represent the nation and solve its problems, and often call for unorthodox solutions that appeal to the common people. The recent spread of populist nationalism throughout the world has triggered a growing interest in the subject, led mainly by journalists. The Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump in the US have provoked a flurry of media coverage in Europe and the Americas, along with parliamentary debates. Some social scientists have sought to explain the resurgence of nationalism and the spread of populism in recent decades, but important questions remain and most of the scholarship has not adequately addressed the fusion of nationalism and populism. It fails to examine the combination of populism and nationalism comparatively, especially the contrast between the more progressive and leftist versions such as those in Latin America, and the more traditional conservative varieties that are gaining strength in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This interdisciplinary collection by experts on Europe and the Americas fills this void. The volume examines various experiences with populist nationalism, and offers theoretical tools to assess its future. Some chapters are in-depth country case studies and others take a broader perspective, but all open the door for meaningful comparison.

In Europe and beyond, today populism is alive and kicking. Over the past few years, anti-establishment parties have made substantial strides. Some of them have reached the levers of governments, while others are consolidating their gains. Being a “thin” ideology, populism is being contaminated by nationalism. This book offers a number of case studies on those countries whose governments have been labelled “national-populist”. Ranging from Italy to the United States, from the Visegrad countries to Turkey, Russia, and Latin America, this Report aims to single out what all these cases have in common, but also what sets them apart from each other.

"This book offers the first significant examination of the rise of neo-nationalism and its impact on the missions, activities, behaviors, and productivity of leading national universities. This book also presents the first major comparative exploration of the role of national politics and norms in shaping the role of universities in nation-states, and vice versa, and discusses when universities are societal leaders or followers-in promoting a civil society, facilitating talent mobility, in researching challenging social problems, or in reinforcing and supporting an existing social and political order"--

Populism and globalization are shorthand for the temper of our times. Populism is usually cast as globalization’s nemesis, a backlash against worldwide connectivity, while globalization is often said to be in retreat or even demise. This book takes issue with both interpretations, claiming instead that while populism of all shades tends to be anti-globalist, the globalism it is pitted against has changed dramatically in recent years and is increasingly decentred, destabilized, contingent, multipolar, and multidirectional. Axford paints a picture of this new globalization and dissects the strains of postmodern populism that both contest it and are its expression. Attention to the current surge of populism also affords purchase on an axial feature of our turbulent and globalized world—the imbrication or antithesis of local and global, of difference and sameness. This is an interdisciplinary examination of populism as a factor in global change, drawing on international politics, sociology, and global studies.

Despite the recent wealth of literature on national populism, research has often overlooked one crucial aspect: the border. This innovative book bridges these key concepts, providing a new theoretical conceptualisation of the interplay between populism, nationalism and territorial borders.

This book investigates the historical roots of the Italian Republic’s oldest surviving political party, the populist far right Lega (Nord), tracing its origins to post-war Italy. The author examines two main case studies: the Movements for Regional Autonomy (MRAs), the Piedmontese Movement for Regional Autonomy (the MARP) and the Bergamascan Movement for Autonomy (the MAB), both of which formed a first wave of post-war populist regionalism from 1955 until 1960. The regionalist leagues which later emerged in both Piedmont and Lombardy in the 1980s – and which would later form part of the Lega Nord – represented in many ways a revival of the MRAs’ populist regionalist discourse and ideology and, therefore, a second wave of post-war populist regionalism. Despite this, neither the MRAs nor the twenty year gap between these waves of activism have received the attention they deserve. Drawing on a series of archival and secondary sources this book takes an innovative approach which blends concepts and theories from historical sociology and political science. It also provides a nuanced examination of the continuities and discontinuities between the MRAs and the Lega from the 1950s until time of publication. This contributes to debates not only in contemporary Italian history, but also populism and the far right. While rooted in historical approaches, the book’s interdisciplinarity makes it suitable for students and researchers across a variety of subject areas including European history, modern history, and political history.

Providing a comparative analysis of Central and Eastern European economies, this book explores the economic impacts of populism in those countries in the region which have seen some form of populist rule. Populism has been thriving in the new member states of the EU ever since the outburst of the global financial and economic crisis, but unlike the cases of Latin America, Brexit or the Trump administration, the emphasis has not been on trade protectionism or unsustainable macroeconomic policies in these countries. This book demonstrates that studying macroeconomic variables such as fiscal balance or current account positions cannot tell the whole story of the economic consequences of populism. Instead, a more nuanced scrutiny of who gets what under populist rule is required. Adopting the ideational definition of populism, the volume shows that Central and Eastern European populists have heavily reshaped redistributive policies; yet, they have not neglected the budget constraint of the general government. Instead, there has been a tendency to disregard the institutional constraints of decision-making in the economy and, in turn, to redefine the regulatory framework and property rights structure of the respective economies. This innovative edited volume will be of interest to readers in political economy and political science who wish to better understand the impacts of populism.